There are various manufacturers of black powder. The ones that I have used the most are Swiss and Goex. Both of these are highly recommended by experienced members of our club. Not all black powder is created equal. I have been told that some brands burn dirtier than others and leave more fowling. Swiss and Goex are both cleaner burning powder than some of the others.
There are also black powder substitutes, but today we are not going to go into details about the substitutes. I would say that you can’t switch powder brands, or from black powder to a substitute and assume that you will need the same amount of powder. When you are tuning your muzzleloader to shoot the most accurate and consistent, you will want to stay with the same black powder throughout the process.
Today I mainly wanted to discuss which black powder size you should use for each application. The size of the black powder particles is shown by the rating of 1F, 2F, 3F or 4F. This is also sometimes show at F, FF, FFF or FFFF. The more Fs the finer the powder particles are. Notice the chart below:
Generally speaking for flintlock and percussion black powder shooting, you will typically be using 2F, 3F or 4F.
4F is used to prime the pan on a flintlock. I also keep a small amount of 4F in case I dry ball my percussion rifle, and will load the drum with the 4F through the nipple or drum clean out screw, so that I can shoot the ball out of the gun.
2F and 3F are the two sizes that are generally used for the charge for muzzleloaders. Remember that 3F is finer than 2F, thus it burns faster. Because the particles are smaller the same weight of powder fits into a smaller space. Since the barrel of the pistol is short, you want as much of the powder to burn before the ball exits the barrel. Since 3F burns faster than 2F, 3F is generally used for black powder pistols.
Rifles on the other had can work with either 2F or 3F. As a general rule of thumb, they say to use 3F for .45 cal and below, and 2F for .50 cal and above. This is always a good place to start, but you may want to experiment with the other size powder, just so see if you guns accuracy improves or not. I believe that a shorter barrel gun like a Hawken with a 28″ barrel may work better with 3F, and a longer barrel gun, like a 48″ barrel may do better with 2F.
One very important thing to note is that smokeless powder can NEVER be used in a muzzleloader. This is very dangerous. So if you reload smokeless ammunition, be sure to keep that powder away from your black powder equipment.
